Email Reply from Professor is Disappointing – Grad School

Getting in touch with Professors before applying to Universities should be part of your Graduate School Admission strategy.

You can use the sample email template to contact professors.

One of the blog reader used the email template contact a professors and got reply, but he feels disappointed with the reply

I contacted a professor in XXXXXXX. But his response isn’t very encouraging. What should I reply him? Did I go wrong anywhere in the mail I sent him?

Email to Professor

The following was the email sent to the professor.

Dear Dr.XXXXXX,

I, XXXXXX, am pursuing a bachelor’s degree in electrical  engineering at Anna University, Chennai, India. I am applying for the MS (EE) program offered by XXXXX in Fall 2010. I am interested in joining your research group at the Multimedia and Networking Lab.

I studied your article, “Hand Gesture-based Computing for Hearing and Speech Impaired,” which appeared in the IEEE Multimedia Magazine. I am currently working on a voice controlled robot for physically challenged persons. I am very much interested in the part that deals with generation of gestures from  speech input. I would like to contribute to your work in that area.

Will you be accepting students into your lab for the year 2010? I would be glad if you could direct me to a few other related publications.

Thanks for your time. I look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Reply from Professor

You can touch base after you arrive here. However, I do not have any funding for masters’ students.

MS or PhD?

What do you expect a professor to say to you? Getting financial aid is not as easy as you think, you have to prove to them you are qualified to it, that you have adequate ability, skills and problem solving skills when work is assigned to you.

You can do that by working for a professor for 1 or 2 semesters. Your email only had 3 lines discussing about your project. Just with that, don’t expect to get financial  aid.

We have said many times before about the very high chances of getting admission to PhD with financial aid along with admissions in numerous blog posts. The above reply (from a professor) makes things very clear about financial aid.

Your approach is right and not many professors usually respond to prospective students applying for a master’s program. If you have stated that you are interested to study PhD, the response will be very different (positive according to you).

Be happy that you got a reply and the school has funding for PhD, so consider applying for PhD at the same university.

Email to Professor’s: Series

The following series of articles will give you further information about the pros and cons in contacting professors before graduate school admission (both for master’s and PhD degree programs).

1. How to Contact Professors for Graduate School Admission
2. Think Twice Before Contacting Professors via Email for Admission
3. 11 Tips to Follow when Writing an Email to Professors
4. Email Template to Contact Graduate School Professors
5. Sample Letter to Get Funding From University in USA
6. I sent Emails and Got Favorable Response from Professors
7. Reply from Professor is Disappointing about Grad School Admission (this article)